


Snake

by Eremji (handsfullofdust)



Series: Snakes & Ladders [2]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Brief Mentions of Past Orion Slavery, Cunnilingus, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Friends With Benefits, Mentions of Multiple Partners, Minor James T. Kirk/Spock, Minor Spock/Nyota Uhura, Roommates to Lovers to Friends, Self-Doubt, Unreliable Narrator, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-19 22:59:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14247558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handsfullofdust/pseuds/Eremji
Summary: Nyota never doubted herself – until she did. When all your plans fall apart, sometimes you have to go back to the beginning to find what you need.





	Snake

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again to all the wonderful individuals who made this happen. I wanted to write the other side of the coin. It's not necessary to read anything else to understand this, but it's a companion to Ladder. This story is about finding what you need, even when you didn't want to see that it was in front of you the whole time.
> 
> You can catch me on [Tumblr.](https://eremji.tumblr.com/)

 

‘Darling heart, I loved you from the start

But you’ll never know what a fool I’ve been’

\- Florence + The Machine, ‘ _Hardest of Hearts_ ’

 

* * *

 

 

Dakar is beautiful in every season, but during the summers Nyota learns the streets by foot. There’s a small Starfleet base, half hidden by a public market selling fresh food. Their presence is congruent with every other major city on Earth, and the African heat makes the climate popular for offworld Federation members that prefer the scalding equatorial summers. Surrounding cities have grown up around Senegal’s capital, with air cars darting through their glass and duranium towers, hubs of characterless Federation progress. Dakar keeps lazily to the seaside, squatting against the swell of change.  
  
On clear days, old fashioned leisure cruisers rocket out on the Atlantic on impulse engines. For a few credits, an enterprising explorer can hitch a ride out to Cabo Verde, to the nature preserves and quiet beaches flanked by small cities and deep forests. In the intervening summers after her graduation from _L’Académie de Xénolinguistiques et Mathematiques_ , before she sits for her Starfleet exams, Nyota regularly makes her way out to the glassy beaches hemming the caldera of Pico de Fogo and picks up Portuguese – and, incongruously, a dialect of Tellaran – from a group of local park rangers.  
  
The night she returns home to find her Starfleet acceptance letter, she is covered in salt spray and ash, streaked from head to toe from riding the night waters astern a fisherman’s felucca with questionable inertial dampeners. The stars are brilliant over the dark wash of the Atlantic, the glassy surface reflecting a milky river of light to the fore of the little ship, and she lies back on the weather-worn deck and tries to imagine what warp travel in the unknown reaches of the universe might be like.  
  
All the doors of their home are thrown open. Silence settles over the household and her mother puts the Academy notice into her hands. The paper is heavy. The embossed parchment is stamped with a silver Starfleet insignia. She runs her thumbs over it, hands trembling, before she unfolds it and reads the news.  
  
“What if I don’t make it?” she asks, thinking of the subtle curves of Dakar, where sometimes the streets turn into unpaved walks, flanked by tropical gardens and unfurling fronds. The universe is vast and dangerous, and for all the languages she speaks, she doesn’t know how to name the sudden fear that wells up beneath her sternum, like entropy might shake her apart.  
  
“Do not fear, my sweet Nyota,” her mother says, and touches Nyota’s hair with a smile. “This has always been your dream.”

 

* * *

 

 

Nyota learns Gaila has an Orion slaver’s brand during her first day at Starfleet Academy. They share a small Starfleet room, and Gaila is bright and sweet and smart – pretty enough that she makes Nyota feel clumsy and coltish. Gaila is a year older and six months ahead in her courses.  
  
They meander down to the communal showers after the evening orientation, their first night in a strange city, in a strange home, abandoning their cozy little dormitory room before anything is unpacked.  
  
Gaila is stripped naked to the waist, her cadet jacket dangling over one arm, and catches Nyota staring at the ugly scar on her shoulder blade. Gaila’s grin is all teeth, sharklike, and does nothing to staunch the immediate rush of embarrassment at being caught.  
  
“Like what you see?” Gaila asks, presenting herself, advertising her nudity with a sinuous motion. Nyota is so shocked by the question that, for a horrible moment, she thinks Gaila is talking about the brand. There’s something jaunty and contrived about the way Gail cocks her hip and poses. She flings her discarded clothing on the narrow bench between them and wriggles out of her uniform pants, making a show of it.  
  
“What are you talking about?” Nyota bristles, irritated by the accuracy of Gaila’s presumption.  
  
Gaila’s naked beneath her uniform, no undergarments; her ass is shapely, and the narrow slit between her legs is hairless and soft. It’s different enough from her own body that Nyota is curious, but Nyota looks away. “If we're going to be sharing, you may as well look. I don't mind.”  
  
“I don't want to look,” Nyota lies, tidily undoing her own uniform blouse, lingering on the buttons. It’s better not to get involved.  
  
She has academics to focus on, she doesn’t want to get tangled up in some whirlwind romance with someone from a culture that thinks monogamy is a punishment. The only thing worse than falling for an Orion would be getting mixed up with a Deltan. She pauses on her button and fixates on breathing slowly, attempting to still the unfamiliar fear of failure.  
  
“Not interested in a little xenocultural exchange?” Gaila asks, voice high and sweet, full of laughter and not a hint of self-consciousness. Nyota can't decide if she's being mocked or propositioned in earnest. It’s intensely uncomfortable – and unexpectedly arousing. “Not uptight about a little cross-species fluid exchange, are you? That'd be a pity. I bet you taste as good as you smell.”  
  
“Orion pheromones are difficult for Human females to process,” Nyota says stiffly, holding her towel to her chest, face hot, using her scraps of knowledge like a shield. A pause, and the way Gaila is looking at her, makes Nyota further justify, “It’s nothing personal.”  
  
She feels about five inches tall under Gaila’s scrutiny, but Gaila licks her lower lip and cocks her head thoughtfully, birdlike. “Well, since I'm the only Orion currently attending Starfleet Academy, I think it makes everything just a little personal, doesn't it?”  
  
Gaila disappears into a shower cubicle without further preamble, letting go of Nyota’s misstep as easy as breathing. A warmth blossoms in Nyota torso, an unfamiliar mix of interest and embarrassment. She has never been ashamed of her lean body, her narrow hips, her straight spine, her small, high breasts, but Gaila is bountiful, overflowing like a river in the spring. Nyota waits, until she is certain Gaila will not see, then strips and retreats to her own shower cubicle.  
  
She washes herself with unscented soap, scrubbing the stink day off her skin, banishing the smell of a city too big for itself. She misses her mother’s home, the light and color of the hot summer evenings, the mild winters on the beach, where she could stretch out in the sand and listen to the sea birds.  
  
San Francisco has its own gulls, but they’re like it's people; too quick, noisy, clamoring. Sharp-eyed and self-serving. Nyota can feel the noise of it sinking into her bones like a bad ache. She’s been away from home for three days, and she lies awake at night, the scrubbed, recycled air of Starfleet dormitories rushing in and out of her lungs.  
  
She’s always wanted to be among the stars, but right now, with the cold tile under her feet and the voices of strangers around her, she misses home.  
  
Gaila’s voice echoes in the lonely, tiled showers, a sweet and lilting accompaniment to the homesick weight in Nyota’s belly. If Nyota’s hands linger overlong on herself, thoughts drifting to the broad curve of Gaila’s hips and the soft green swell of what lies between her thighs, Gaila can't see and there’s no harm in it.  
  
Nothing will ever come of it. She lets the memory of home swell beneath her heart, until her mind is filled with an ocean of stars and the sweet sound of Gaila’s singing.

 

* * *

 

 

Nyota has trouble adjusting to the fast-paced, sanitized Starfleet life, and she can’t shrug it off. She has trouble integrating, collecting friendships slowly even by Starfleet Academy standards, where members spend the bulk of their time studying, or are quickly forgotten after washing out into civilian programs.  
  
Despite unparalleled access to other cultures, Nyota feels stifled by all except her most advanced xenocultural courses. None of the communications track courses seem interested in fostering anything beyond a token ability to be inoffensive to as many cultures as possible, and the superficially colorful composition of the San Francisco campus is, perhaps unsurprisingly, still deeply Human-centric.  
  
But Gaila knows everyone worth knowing at the Academy by the end of their third month, fighting upstream against cultural expectations, tenacious in her social participation. By the end of the second quarter, Nyota avoids their shared dormitory as much as possible because there seems to be an endless troupe of guests in and out of Gaila’s bed. She’s loud and unabashed and makes very little visible effort to do anything except socialize, though Nyota is aware that Gaila’s admission would be retracted if her academics ever suffered.  
  
When the opportunity for a practicum presents itself, Nyota jumps at the chance to spend half a Standard year aboard the USS _Ahriman._ Her cramped solo berth is mercifully private, and leaves Gaila to her own devices to finish out their second year.  
  
Nyota kicks an Andorian girl out of their room three years, three weeks, and four days into bunking with Gaila, when the astrometrics labs are all booked and she’s tired of feeling like she’s haunting her own dormitory.  
  
Squaring off, she asks, “Was she even Starfleet, Gaila? Civilians aren't allowed on the campus.”  
  
Gaila is looking carefully at her nails, which are painted a candy yellow. Nyota has never seen anything so garish in her life, but Gaila’s green skin and bright red hair already set her apart in a sea of timid Human pinks and browns. She’s naked, her dark green nipples hard, and Nyota can’t help but look.  
  
Nyota plants both hands on her waist, a gesture that struck fear in her as a child, and hopes she carries even a fraction of the gravitas and authority her mother could convey with the gesture. She feels too big for her skin, like her hips are too narrow and her shoulders not straight enough to be taken seriously.  
  
The easy, unflappable rise and fall of Gaila’s ample bust has not changed, and neither has the narrow smile she wears. It's not a kind expression, but Nyota has difficulty reading it without more context.  
  
Her mouth is mussed from kissing the Andorian girl, and Nyota wants to crawl into Gaila’s bed and leave her own mark. Nyota has been teetering between resentful animosity and tense attraction since the very beginning, and she feels worn thin by the effort of resisting. Gaila’s eyes crinkle with amusement at the corners and Nyota feels utterly transparent.  
  
“I don't exactly check ID chips at the door,” Gaila answers, looking up at Nyota from under her lashes. Her eyes are blue, the exact shade of the Atlantic on the summer morning Nyota received her Academy acceptance notice. “Ruins the mood?”  
  
It frustrates her, how easily Gaila flits from person to person, when Nyota gets all tripped up before she even begins, tangled on trying to predict the future.  
  
She begins, “Gaila, you know it's against regulations for cadets –”  
  
“If you're going to throw the rule book at me every time I break a fraternization regulation, you might as well copy in the _rest_ of Starfleet and save us all some time,” Gaila says slyly.  
  
“Maybe I will. You’ve worked your way through most of the Academy at this rate,” Nyota snaps, burning with three years’ worth of resentment.  
  
She freezes, slightly horrified as soon as the words are out of her mouth, because the ability accept other cultures’ sexual and social practices is one of primary markers for Starfleet Academy eligibility. The kind of space debris that can't even do that much only ever sees the stars in the belly of a mining rig, where they won't cause a socio-political disaster.  
  
Gaila pushes herself up, leaning back on her hands, and regards Nyota with a sudden, sharp expression that makes Nyota feel like fleeing. She doesn’t seem to be offended, giving Nyota a predatory look, and the moment she says, “Wait, _wait_ – are you _jealous_?” Nyota wants to sink into the ground and disappear.  
  
“Don’t be _absurd_.” Nyota yanks off her uniform top and fishes out a sweater from the locker at the end of her bed, angrier than she ought to be and ashamed of her own pettiness. Her shoulders shake. For all Gaila frustrates her, she’s been kind enough. Not a friend, but something adjacent to it out of necessity and proximity. “I didn't mean it. I just –”  
  
But she doesn’t know what to say. It isn’t her business who Gaila has over, and, she tells herself, it’s only that she wants her own privacy, is tired of dancing around the edges of her rightful space to give Gaila more than her share. It’s not that she wants to climb into the circle of Gaila’s arms and make her forget she wanted anyone else.  
  
She doesn't hear Gaila move, so much as feel it, and the touch from behind isn't entirely unexpected. Gaila has never been very concerned with the specifics of Nyota's personal boundaries, though this is her first real infringement. Her fingers, where they caress the hem of Nyota’s uniform skirt, are warm and soft. An involuntary shudder of pleasure runs through her, arousal arriving like a flood, and she feels hot from her clit all the way to the cleft of her ass.  
  
“I know. You know, I have a keen sense of smell,” Gaila says, warm, throaty. She turns her face into the side of Nyota’s neck and it's almost too much to bear – Nyota feels suddenly, urgently like she wants something, _anything_ to happen, or she might burst with feeling. “Do you want to see what else Orions can do?”  
  
Nyota blinks down at the elegant curve of Gaila’s hand, thumb caressing the dip of her navel, waiting for permission, and decides, just this once, it's fine to give in. Decides that this can just be a thing, that it doesn't have to be _everything_ – that she can have everything later, with someone who doesn’t constantly make her feel like she's coming undone around the edges.  
  
She closes her eyes, says, “Sure,” and drops her clothes back into the locker in surrender. It's not a big deal. She can feel good, and then they can move on. She’s tired of being left out of her own life, tired of fighting – against the sly looks Gaila keeps shooting her, and against herself.  
  
Gaila exhales against her skin, and makes a small, electrified noise that makes Nyota want to turn and lick the sound right out of her mouth. When Nyota faces her, Gaila’s smile is all teeth, and Nyota feels like prey. It’s thrilling, the same way winding up the narrow paths of Pico de Fogo is thrilling, like rounding the corner on a hairpin turn and discovering the narrow trace drops three hundred meters straight into sharp rocks.  
  
Nyota’s hands land on Gaila’s bare hips, her thumbs tracing up the soft dip of Gaila’s waist.  
  
Gaila says, tenderly, “Oh, Nyota,” like the last few years haven't been blanketed by a complicated tangle of near-animosity and desire. Like Gaila hasn’t been bluffing her way through the Academy just as hard as Nyota.  
  
Nyota has always sought out steadiness, closeness, reliability; Gaila has always been disruptive and thrilling in ways that Nyota could not have prepared for.  
  
“We’ll take my bed,” Nyota says, mouth a straight line. Her hands are trembling.  
  
She isn't jealous, not like Gaila assumes, not of the waifish girl she ejected from their dormitory – not of anyone else who's been sucked into Gaila's orbit – but if Nyota is doing this, she's doing it in familiar territory, not in sheets that smell like someone else’s skin.  
  
“Anything you want, precious,” Gaila says, solicitous. Her mouth tastes sweet when she steals another kiss from Nyota.  
  
She feathers a nebula of kisses across Nyota’s bare shoulder, sliding clever fingers under Nyota’s bra and undoing the hooks with practiced ease. Nyota’s nipples are already hard, and they ache when Gaila caresses them, exposing Nyota with an expression of wonder.  
  
Gaila is shorter, but makes use of her broad hips and her deceptively strong build to ease Nyota back onto the bed. Nyota sits, willing herself to be pliant, but uncertain of how it works when she doesn't have the usual parts to grip. She's only done this a handful of times, all with nervy boys from back home, inexpertly fumbling in shadowed doorways and terrified of being seen.  
  
Gaila’s curves are unfamiliar, her skin sumptuous, mouth sweet. She crouches between Nyota’s knees and looks up at Nyota with earnest desire. Nyota lifts her hand, touches Gaila’s hair, and feels weightless for the first time since she drifted into the bay four summers ago, before she was flung into unfamiliar territory.  
  
Nyota has never wanted to taste anything so much. She yearns to lick a path from the arch of Gaila’s neck to the suggestive rise of skin below Gaila’s belly, but she just cups her hand along Gaila’s jaw and presses the pad of her thumb against Gaila’s lower lip. Gaila’s tongue is surprisingly pink when she curls it cheekily against Nyota’s skin, a dozen degrees or more above Nyota’s own temperature.  
  
Gaila slips her hands under Nyota’s skirt and tugs her underwear down past her ass, surging up at the same time to kiss Nyota. Her teeth clack inexpertly against Gaila’s, but Gaila just laughs, delighted, and redoubles her efforts, until Nyota makes a soft noise in her throat. Gaila gets both hands on her ass, pulling her forwards until Nyota’s clit is pushed against the soft curve of Gaila’s belly. She leaves damp streaks on Gaila’s skin, wet just from kissing.  
  
She gets her hands in Gaila’s hair and sucks on her lower lip, the way the Starfleet boy moonlighting in Dakar had done to her once, with his pale, pretty hands, with his freckled face.  
  
Nyota fumbles the second attempt and their mouths crash inexpertly. She starts to pull away, but Gaila derails every anxious thought in Nyota’s mind when she gets a hand between them, and the lightest contact with Nyota’s clit is like being set on fire.  
  
“There you are,” Gaila murmurs against her skin. “Time to stop thinking.”  
  
Gaila leans up to mouth her jaw and neck, licking tantalizingly up the side of her throat and sucking at Nyota’s lower lip. Her mouth is hot, overwhelming, trading gasping breaths back and forth. Gaila touches the tip of her tongue to Nyota’s lower lip, traces it, teasing, and then slides down her body.  
  
She sucks and bites her way over, pausing to squeeze Nyota’s breast, gathering it into her palm, and moves to suck on the nipple. She looks up from beneath her lashes while she draws clever little circles around Nyota’s clit with the flat of her thumb. Her mouth is so red against Nyota’s skin, a beautiful contrast, and Nyota can only watch breathlessly, her hand in Gaila’s hair, while Gaila works her way down Nyota’s body.  
  
“You smell so good,” Gaila says. “Do you know how hard it is to get to sleep at night when you’re over here with your fingers in this pretty little pussy?”  
  
Nyota shudders, her breath coming in little gasps. She touches herself, sometimes, when she’s mostly sure Gaila is sleeping, but privacy in the Academy dormitories is a polite fiction at best. It’s nothing like this, not this raw, heady feeling, part desire, part fear of the unknown.  
  
“No,” Nyota says, voice shaky. “I – I didn't know –” Gaila presses the heel of her hand against the swell of her mons pubis and Nyota can only grind upwards, any hope of answer slipping away beneath a rush of heat up her spine.  
  
“Didn't know what?” Gaila prompts, smiling, dipping her tongue into the divot of Nyota’s navel. It tickles, makes her squirm against Gaila’s hand, makes pleasure rocket through her.  
  
The heat builds and builds, slowly but surely, and Gaila is watching carefully, watching the way the muscles in Nyota’s thighs and belly begin to quiver. Nyota collapses backwards onto her elbows, head tipped back, and grinds herself against Gaila’s hand, her body moving without permission. She feels Gaila’s mouth on the inside of her thigh and shudders with anticipation.  
  
When Gaila closes her mouth over Nyota’s clit and slides two long fingers into her body and it's nothing Nyota expected. Nyota has to muffle her cries with her palm, sealing the noise in, whimpering. Gaila’s fingers curl inside her, putting pressure on places that make Nyota’s spine arch.  
  
It's like someone’s lit a bonfire in her brain, and she can't think, she doesn't want to think. All she wants is this hot, slick slide of Gaila’s hand inside her, fucking her better than anyone or anything else has ever done. She’s blindsided by the intensity of it. Her nipples are hard, her head tossed back, eyes squeezed closed, all that heat and wetness and shuddery, wonderful pleasure converging together, bone-deep and everywhere.  
  
It's too much, it's too fast, and it feels so amazing that Nyota doesn't even care. She doesn't stop to think about consequences and she can't hide from how much she wants this.  
  
At the building edge of her orgasm, she’d let Gaila do anything, just for a resolution to this incredible pressure – she’d let Gaila ride her, take her in her mouth, finger her pussy, lick her ass, let Gaila do the kinds of things to her Nyota’s only read about in secret. The kinds of things people do to each other when they’re blind with lust and trust, filling each other up and breaking each other down.  
  
Gaila sucks, rolling her tongue cleverly around Nyota’s clit, until the sensation is nearly unbearable, until Gaila has to hold Nyota’s hips down to keep her from bucking upwards. She’s got three fingers buried in Nyota’s body, and Nyota curses, Nyota begs, because it all feels like far too much, Gaila feels like far too much.  
  
Nyota braces her foot on Gaila’s shoulder, rocking her hips down to meet the short motion of Gaila’s fingers. She rides the pleasure until the world fuzzes out at the edges and nothing feels solid. It feels like it’s never going to end; she scrabbles for a hold on Gaila’s hair, flexing her fingers in the mess of red curls.  
  
When she comes, Gaila rides her out and lets her down gently, hanging on, her tongue, her fingers, working slowly but not stopping. She's relentlessly determined to wring every last bit of pleasure out of Nyota’s body.  
  
She’s covered in sweat, panting, her body still burning, when Gaila slithers up onto the bed beside her and smiles at her. Nyota’s limbs are shaking and she can only stare at Gaila, wide-eyed and breathing hard, while Gaila licks her fingers clean.  
  
“Feel better?” Gaila asks, sweet and musical. Nyota lifts her trembling hand to reciprocate, but Gaila pushes her hand down and says, “Shh. Relax. There’s plenty of time for that later.”  
  
“I don’t –” Nyota begins, but she has nothing to follow it with, all of her protests slipping away.  
  
“The problem,” Gaila says thoughtfully, “with Human women, is that you’re not nearly selfish enough.”  
  
Nyota can't quite parse that, her limbs so lax she feels like she could fall asleep half sprawled over Gaila, so she asks, “What?”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Gaila murmurs, and bends to place a kiss on Nyota’s shoulder. Her mouth is still damp, she smells like Nyota. “You look so good like this. I want to see you like this again.”  
  
Nyota thinks about that, staring at the ceiling, while Gaila hums something soothing, an Orion lullaby maybe – Nyota doesn’t know what Gaila carries with her from her past, what’s hidden under that shiny, candy-coated exterior, except for that terrifying brand on Gaila’s shoulder.  
  
No matter how bright and successful and fierce Gaila is, her admission to Starfleet was gated. The same beneficent hand was never extended to Orion, and Nyota understands that Gaila is regarded with suspicion. Gaila is still a refugee, living in a strange place, navigating Starfleet like Nyota – under a sky full of stars she doesn’t recognize.  
  
“Will you teach me how to speak Orion?” Nyota asks, and rolls onto her stomach. Gaila puts a hand on Nyota’s back, just above the swell of Nyota’s ass, and Nyota bends to kiss the taste of herself off Gaila’s mouth.  
  
“Sure,” Gaila says, like nothing in the world is easier. For all Nyota hasn't reciprocated, she looks just as satisfied. “Anything you want, precious.”

 

* * *

 

 

Their arrangement suits her just fine. Nyota doesn't count on falling in love.  
  
It's not that she minds, not really, when Gaila comes home from a night out, sporting a new crop of love bites, well-worn and sweaty from dancing or whatever else she's been doing. They’re just roommates – and then friends – with benefits.  
  
They take a lot of showers the first few weeks, and if Nyota is less gentle with Gaila those nights, fucking her with her hands and tongue hard against the tile or their sheets, Gaila doesn't complain. Once, when Gaila comes home at dawn, Nyota tucks herself against Gaila, pinning her to the bed, and touches Gaila until Gaila is helpless with laughter and begging for Nyota to do more than tease.  
  
Nyota’s never turned away, not even when she crawls into Gaila’s bed the night before finals, so anxious she takes forever to get off, sweating and squirming beneath Gaila’s thin sheets until the small hours of the morning. Gaila just watches her, eyes crinkled at the corners, never faltering, until all the self-doubt in Nyota’s mind is washed clean in the wake of an orgasm that’s more relief than pleasure.  
  
Gaila looks good with her lips bitten, even if it isn't Nyota doing it. Nyota starts to enjoy the way she can finger Gaila’s slick pussy, the way she can sometimes work four fingers in after Gaila’s come home from a long night of being worked over. She knows that if she sucks just right, Gaila will break down into sobs of pleasure, shaking apart beneath Nyota’s hands.  
  
Nyota learns to speak Orion piecemeal. Gaila teaches her between kisses, pressing each syllable into Nyota’s skin. She rides Nyota sometimes, head back, grinding against her hand or her leg or her pussy, always ready to spill Nyota into bed and wring every drop of pleasure out of them both. She’s so soft everywhere, and Nyota loves to bury her face between the firm cheeks of her ass and lick her until she mewls, but she also loves how Gaila will drag work into bed and spend days awake on projects, until the solution coalesces beneath her elegant hands.  
  
Sometimes Nyota bends and murmurs covetous things in Orion. Orion has so few words for love that are kind, but it suits them, because Nyota is greedy, and most nights she lets Gaila slither down between her legs and lick her until Nyota’s skin feels like it’s burning.  
  
Nyota doesn't count on falling in love, but she does. Piece by piece, like the stars in the sky, like the words in a sentence. Between one syllable and the next, she’s draped over Gaila, kissing a line down the delicate arch of her spine, murmuring soft, heartfelt things.  
  
She knows that Gaila notices it – Gaila notices everything about everyone – and how Gaila stops coming home smelling like other people, how slowly Gaila stops fucking everyone except Nyota.  
  
She stops going to parties, starts crawling into bed with Nyota and sleeping tucked against her. Nyota has memorized the three-beat flutter of Gaila’s heart, and how her soft curves fit comfortably against Nyota’s side, and it feels like something she shouldn’t be able to hold on to, like lightning in a jar, like the wind on the ocean.  
  
A bottle of pheromone suppressants appears on Gaila’s bedside table, and fear slowly settles in Nyota’s spine, day over day. Gaila starts smelling like Risan honey when she sweats, instead of the faint, acrid-sweet scent of her natural body chemistry that Nyota has grown accustomed to.  
  
“You don't have to,” Nyota says, Gaila’s head pillowed on her breast. Gaila is drawing circles around Nyota’s navel with her thumb, her eyes heavy-lidded and her skin still cooling. She looks happier than Nyota has ever seen her, her expression open and soft, and it terrifies Nyota.  
  
“I want to,” Gaila says. She presses a necklace of kisses against Nyota’s skin, and Nyota feels her chest tighten. Gaila pushes herself up on her arms, bracketing Nyota’s torso, and stoops to nose her way down hot skin from Nyota’s shoulder to hip. “It's not like you didn't see this coming.”  
  
“I don't want you to change for me,” Nyota tries, her confidence buckling. She isn’t sure what she wants, but they've been doing this for nearly a year and they must be nearing a breaking point. Nyota is fine. She’s _fine_.  
  
There is a tiny furrow between Gaila’s brow. Nyota wants to smooth it away and flee simultaneously; she's not sure if she's more afraid of losing Gaila or keeping her.  
  
Gaila looks troubled, confused, and she says, “I haven't changed anything.” She touches Nyota’s hair. “I think you’re the only person I’ve never doubted wants me for exactly who I am.”  
  
“I can’t do this,” Nyota says, and disentangles herself. She sits up, and Gaila watches her warily.  
  
“We don't always get what we want, precious,” Gaila says. She's frowning, blinking, taken aback. Nyota has never seen Gaila frown, and guilt eats at her for planting that seed of unhappiness.  
  
The other shoe will drop, soon enough, and Nyota doesn’t think she can hold it together much longer, not if Gaila decides she’s more trouble than she’s worth. Nyota’s destined for the stars, and she won’t let anything stand in her way. Love or not.  
  
Terrified of the emotion swelling under her chest, thinking it’s better to leave before Gaila gets tired of her, Nyota says, “I think it’s best if this doesn’t continue.”  
  
Nyota leaves, and when she comes back, ready to apologize, to face her fears, Gaila is nowhere to be found.  
  
The Starfleet Academy Housing Department denies her request to transfer to a new room so late in the term. She spends her time in the labs and tries not to think of who else might be rumpling Gaila’s sheets.

 

* * *

 

Nyota meets Spock and is immediately enamored in the way she was as a girl, half her father’s height and peering from behind him at the dark-eyed Vulcan woman that visited her preparatory school. T’Pali was brilliant and solemn, but there was a serene fondness around her eyes when Nyota stepped forward to ask a question about the acoustic engineering presentation, and all the parts in Nyota in love with knowledge were smitten.  
  
“You have a thorough grasp of Klingon grammatical structure,” Spock says, packing his equipment into a locked cabinet, efficient but unhurried. She has never once seen him break his mask of Vulcan emotional impartiality in the previous six months of their acquaintance, but he pauses and adds, “You display great dedication to your chosen path. It is appropriate to be proud of your accomplishments.”  
  
Tentatively, Nyota lays her hand on the back of his. Spock goes green to the tips of his ears.  
  
He agrees to go to dinner with Nyota.  
  
Spock is what Nyota’s mother would call a safe bet. He watches Nyota with dark eyes, cautious and patient, and when they finally become lovers, he’s firm-handed but attentive. He makes Nyota feel safe, and he’s unexpectedly passionate for a Vulcan lover.  
  
He keeps commitment at arm’s length, like everything else, and doesn't care that she’s in love with Gaila because, he says, dark eyes serious, that love is not useful to Vulcans as a measurement of commitment or compatibility. They only speak about it once. She feels slightly foolish when he cocks his head and says, “I understand your regard for me stands on its own merit, Nyota.”  
  
Spock isn't wrong. She feels for him, his deliberate kindness, the things he keeps locked away. He might marry her one day, far in the future; their careers are compatible. They both want the _Enterprise_ , and neither of them want a command of their own. When warmth for him swells beneath her breast, blooms in her belly, and she finds herself thinking of him, the choice seems obvious. Reasonable.  
  
Nyota never fears for herself. He’s stable, dependable, logical, and he has a room that she can stay in, away from Gaila. If there isn’t any great passion between them, Nyota tells herself that’s fine, because she’s not risking herself, that Spock is better than some forest fire romance that will burn itself out in a few years and leave Nyota hollow.  
  
He doesn’t have a temper, he doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t move too quickly, isn’t too bright and mercurial to hold on to. He doesn’t lay in her lap and pull her face down for kisses while she’s trying to work. He doesn’t push her up against a wall in the middle of a crowded club and make her body shake until she feels like her bones are liquefied.  
  
Spock is what Nyota’s mother would call a safe bet. Nyota’s mother doesn’t approve of safe bets.  
  
It’s better that way.

 

* * *

 

Nyota has a promising career in xenolinguistics, and in a few years she’ll be heading her own communications department on Fleet ship. She has her eye on the _Enterprise_ and is likely to get it. Her performance is stellar; she studies until she thinks and breathes and lives in Klingon, Orion, Vulcan, Romulan, Andorian. When she begins to run out of official Federation languages, she sequesters herself in the audio engineering labs and listens to the buzzing background song of the stars, hunting for an answer to a question she doesn’t know the words to.  
  
There are rarely any surprises in Nyota’s life, at least not until Jim Kirk crawls out from beneath Gaila’s bed, half-naked with Gaila’s nail marks on his back, and blows Nyota’s neat and ordered universe wide open.  
  
When Vulcan is destroyed, all of Nyota’s plans fall apart. There are roughly ten thousand Vulcan survivors, a whole culture erased from the universe, and Spock does not show his grief. Nyota shoulders it anyhow, and it weighs her down with all of his unspoken anger. He pushes her away for the first time since she was bold enough to lay her hand over his and ask him out for drinks.  
  
Gaila is, mercifully, alive among the wreckage. Spock waits with her for weeks for the news, not just of Gaila, but of all their peers. She swipes through the logs, pausing over the faces of friends she’ll never dance with again, never share drinks with, never laugh with.  
  
They pull Gaila’s pod from the space debris, and Spock places his hand on her cheek, kisses away her tears of relief when the Missing in Action indicator on the Academy logs turns from uncertain yellow to happy green.  
  
Spock doesn’t understand. He touches her mind with his, late in that night when all the fear has been wrung out of her and replaced by exhaustion.  
  
His flat, desert thoughts engulf her like a sandstorm. He blankets what’s left of her unrest, choking out everything except the howl of her own solitude. Spock means well enough, but she wonders if they’re doomed to never learn how to understand each other.

 

* * *

 

 

It's hard not to love Jim. They all do once he finds his legs as a captain. He breaks too many rules, and the Admiralty keeps a tight leash on the _Enterprise_ , but he’s young and even Nyota can see that kind of bright spark in him that you can’t teach, a kindness that isn’t always compatible with the Prime Directive.  
  
She can see Spock edging towards it, can feel it in the warm, fascinated hum of his mind when they meld, though she keeps her observation from him. Spock, ever polite, never intrudes on her privacy, so she watches him founder with an emotion he’s always vehemently denied he experiences.  
  
He doesn’t even recognize it. Neither of them do.  
  
Spock watches Jim like he never watched Nyota, open and naked and raw, all the way down to his bones. Sometimes, when she touches his elbow or his shoulder or the side of his face, he shivers, wound tightly, before his Vulcan facade slides back into place.  
  
He watches Jim the way Nyota watched Gaila. She sees it now, her revelation accompanied by a horrible, sinking feeling. Sees what she had, what she lost, now that she’s watching it happen to someone else.  
  
Nyota thinks a knife in the back would have been easier; at least then, she could have pretended she didn’t see it coming, that she was faultless for holding so tightly to something that was never really hers. That she didn’t take the safe route, wasn’t such a coward.  
  
Gaila takes an assignment planetside, working in Starfleet infosec, and hasn't seen Nyota since Vulcan was attacked.  
  
“Do you love him?” she asks, late one night, suffocating under all of her own lost opportunities. She can’t stop thinking of Gaila, of the way Gaila used to get down on all fours and crawl to Nyota, mischievous, and slide her hands up the backs of Nyota’s calves.  
  
Spock goes still, his uniform shirt in his hands. He has Gamma shift with Jim, and she wonders if she spelled it out for him, would he abandon his post and push Jim into a dark corner, make love to Jim with his strong hands and beautiful mouth.  
  
The opportunity is lost when Spock asks, “Who?” He isn’t frowning – he never frowns – but he closes his hands tightly, rumpling the blue fabric.  
  
“You know,” Nyota says, encouraging. They’ve always been honest with each other. When she turns her head, he looks away. Maybe he doesn’t know. “It’s okay, you know. I’m just –”  
  
“I do not comprehend your query, Nyota,” Spock says stiffly. “Perhaps if you would clarify the topic of conversation.”  
  
She’s so tired of clarification. Where Jim and Spock work as one, Spock and Nyota may as well be communicating in semaphore, both waving their way through a language they never wanted to be fluent in, playing at something they thought they should both have.  
  
Nyota loves Spock. She wants the best for him. She’s not the best.  
  
Instead, she lies. “It’s nothing. I’m tired. I’m not thinking clearly.”  
  
Spock’s face pinches, his concern honest. He touches the side of her face and extends two fingers in an attempt at _ozh’esta_. She closes her eyes and pretends not to see. After some silence, he says, “I will leave and allow you to rest.”  
  
She should ask him to stay. No one would question it; he works double shifts, harder than any other crew member except Jim, and he’d stay if she asked, Jim would sign off on the shift change, kind-hearted and well-intentioned. Jim never intrudes – except he haunts the growing space between Spock and Nyota.  
  
She remains silent; he dresses and leaves. Nyota lies awake thinking of Gaila, Spock’s side of the bed cold and empty, uncertain of what she wants for the first time since Gaila smiled at her.

 

* * *

 

 

When Jim Kirk dies and rises from the dead like some kind of galactic myth, Nyota leaves Spock. It's easier than she thought it would be.  
  
She sees how hungry he is for Jim, his head bowed, his dark gaze exhausted and harrowed. He looks hollowed out, ravenous, his despair hanging around him like smog. He didn’t cry when he lost his mother, couldn’t when he lost his home, but the first night they spend on Earth, amid rescue crews and Starfleet Medical staff, his eyes are green-rimmed, hands balled into fists at his sides.  
  
Nyota retreats to her mother’s summer home, to the light and noise of her family. There are half a dozen people there at any time, and Nyota is never alone. No one asks her to explain herself. The sunsets in Dakar are beautiful, the sandy beaches warm, and she bides her time until she can find her path.  
  
Standing alone at the edge of the ocean, Nyota thinks of how people are like different languages. The structural underpinnings are often the same – fears, hopes, dreams – but there are a thousand, thousand ways to tell someone you love them, and letting go of an unlikely future is one of them.  
  
The waves roll in over her ankles, soaking her sun dress up to her knees. Behind her, Nyota’s mother calls her name for dinner.  
  
Leonard calls her on the third day. He looks exhausted, worn thin by worry, jaw thick with stubble and his hair ruffled. He’s been crying, and fairly recently.  
  
“Len,” she says, soft. He's always been kind to her – even if he orbits around Jim like an overprotective mother bird, in that way of two people who have discovered friendship after having very little left of their own – and she's grateful for his consideration. “Hey.”  
  
“I don't know what I'm doing,” Leonard says. “This whole thing is a mess.”  
  
She feels the first prickle of tears, her throat constricting. Nyota wishes she could be there for him, even with the weight of her own decisions hanging over her like a funerary shroud. She says, “Your best. That's what you’re doing. For Jim, and for the whole crew.”  
  
“Sure don’t feel like it,” Leonard says. His jaw works for a second, and he averts his eyes, scrubbing one hand across his face. He asks, “You holding up okay?”  
  
She settles into an armchair with her PADD, smiling down at him. He's got a heart of gold, as blunt as he can be, and he deserves her honesty.  
  
“Not really. Spock and I called it quits – well, I called it quits,” she says.  
  
“Kinda figured you might,” Leonard says, mouth pursed. “Didn’t want to say anything.”  
  
“Wish you had, Len,” Nyota says. She leans her head in her hand and sighs. “I could’ve used the advice.”  
  
“Would you have listened?” Leonard asks, shrewd. “I think we’re all a little on the ropes right now. This thing with Jim almost has us all beat.”  
  
“It’s not his fault,” Nyota says, and is surprised to find she means it. Jim never meddles, always keeps a polite distance. Never flirts, never does anything but be kind, be himself. It’s enough.  
  
“No, it ain’t, is it?” Leonard says gruffly, shaking his head. “Are you coming back? We could use you around here.”  
  
“I think I’m going to put in for a temporary transfer,” she says, swallowing. The _Aurora_ is leaving for seven months, just short of the time it’ll take to refit the _Enterprise_. There’s nothing about her job that she can’t delegate, and it’ll do her some good to get away. “I just need some time.”  
  
Gaila’s assigned to the _Aurora_. No one else needs to know that, not now, not before she figures out if she can salvage the utter wreckage she’s made out of the one good thing she didn’t know she had.  
  
“Not going to be the same without you. What if Jim doesn’t wake up?” Leonard asks, and Nyota sees right through him. He puts on a good show, but he’s just as afraid as the rest of them. Maybe more so.  
  
“Jim _will_ wake up,” she insists. “I know he will.”  
  
“You know more than me,” Leonard says. He scrubs at his face with both hands. “I’ll let you go. I have to go check on the kid and our Vulcan.”  
  
Nyota finds she knows something about hunger; when she returns to San Francisco to put in her temporary transfer, she kisses Spock and gives him her blessing, though she doesn't think Spock knows he needs it yet.  
  
Gaila’s working in London. Nyota reserves a space on the next intercontinental Starfleet shuttle, and sits awake all night with her travel kit, and thinks of the brand on Gaila’s shoulder, the way she’d smiled, sharp, how her mask had never faltered. She’d fooled Nyota, too.  
  
Nyota has been running away from everything that terrifies her. Everything that’s complicated and wonderful. It never occurred to her that Gaila had been trying to fit in, too, trying to find her way, and that everything had changed because Gaila had found something worthwhile, too.  
  
She’s ashamed, and she understands now – Gaila didn't change because of Nyota, just like Spock didn't change because of Jim. Nyota didn’t change because of any of them. It was there all along, waiting for someone to unearth the potential.

 

* * *

 

 

Gaila is asking, “Who is it?” before the door is open.  
  
She freezes when she sees Nyota, backlit by her apartment light. She has a faint green scar, likely one that the triage regenerator could not erase and that she never went to get removed. It runs from her right temple to her scalp, disappearing into her tousled curls, but she otherwise looks unchanged from the last time that Nyota saw her.  
  
“Hi,” Nyota says, hands shoved in her uniform pockets, fighting the urge to flee. She tries to summon up the bravery that took her out on the open ocean with strangers, took her into Starfleet, took her into the vast, innumerable dangers of space, that has her running right at danger everywhere else in her life.  
  
Gaila leans against the doorway, expression neutral. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”  
  
Nyota takes a step forward. “I took the xenolinguistics research assignment on the _Aurora._ I thought, maybe –”  
  
“You thought what?” Gaila asks, mouth pressed into a hard line.  
  
Nyota takes her in. Gaila’s nails are orange this time, little half-moons with a sparkle of glitter, feminine and loud. She’s wearing rings that catch the light, sparkling. She looks incredible, delectable. Nyota wants to kiss her until she smiles again, like she used to.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Nyota says, and she means it for more than one reason.  
  
Gaila regards her warily. “Things change,” she says, drumming her fingers on the door frame. “Seven months is a long time.”  
  
“Not nearly long enough to make up for being a coward,” Nyota says. “But I can try.”  
  
“What happened to your Vulcan?” Gaila asks, as abrupt as ever, right down to business.  
  
There’s no reason to hide anything from Gaila, so Nyota says, “He went and fell in love with Jim Kirk.”  
  
Gaila’s eyes grow wide, and she presses her hand to her mouth, her laughter tinkling, like it’s the best joke in the world. She leans against the door frame, laughing long and loud, until Nyota is smiling about it too.  
  
It _is_ funny now that she’s taken ten steps back from the wreckage of her own mislaid plans. Spock never had a chance. None of them ever had a chance, least of all Nyota.  
  
“Everyone’s a little bit in love with Jimmy.” Her grin is all teeth, like that first time all over again. It makes Nyota feel syrupy and warm all the way down to her toes.  
  
Nyota takes two steps forward. “Let me come in? I miss you. I’ve been so stupid.”  
  
“Sure,” Gaila says, breathless. Says it like it’s the easiest thing in the world, just like it has been from the moment they met. The easiest, and the hardest. Gaila tilts her head, looks Nyota up and down. She smiles, all the tension going out of the elegant line of her body. “You look good enough to eat.”


End file.
